(E) The Systematic Killing of Jews in the Baltic

1. As we have seen, Irving's account of Goebbels's article in Das Reich explicitly states that the article was taken by the SS as 'a sign from above' and directly inspired the killing of thousands of Jews in Riga on 30 November 1941 'on the orders of local SS commander Friedrich Jeckeln'. There is no evidence at all of any radicalising influence exerted by Goebbels's article on Jeckeln or the SS. As we have already seen, Jeckeln himself had already been involved in a number of large-scale massacres of Jews in the occupied Soviet territory in later summer and autumn of 1941: the over 80,000 Jews exterminated in Kamenets-Podolsk, Kiev, Dniepropetrovsk and Rovno were all killed before the publication of the Goebbels article in Das Reich. Clearly, Jeckeln did not need any 'sign from above' by Goebbels to organise the mass extermination of the Jews.52

2. Similarly, the SS officials in Berlin needed no cue from Goebbels to escalate the mass extermination of the Jews. Adolf Eichmann certainly did not make such claim during his trial in Jerusalem - indeed, he did not even mention Goebbels's article in Das Reich53. And quite apart from the fact that Heinrich Himmler would not have regarded any statement by Goebbels as a 'sign from above', it has already been shown that the SS leadership was pursuing a policy of mass extermination of the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories long before Goebbels's article was published on 16 November 1941. This policy of mass murder was also put into effect in the Baltic states. From July to November 1941, around 80% of the entire Jewish population of Lithuania were killed. The commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (EK 3, one of the four sub-units constituting Einsatzgruppe A) reported on 1 December 1941 that 'the aim of solving the Jew-problem for Lithuania has been achieved by EK 3. There are no more Jews in Lithuania, apart from the work-Jews and their families'.54 The same murderous policy was being pursued in neighbouring Latvia. Einsatzgruppe A reported that by October 1941, 30,000 of the 70,000 Jews in Latvia had already been killed.55 Clearly, the extermination in late November and early December 1941 of the Jews in Riga, the capital of Latvia, was simply following the murderous logic of Nazi extermination policy and had nothing to do with the Goebbels article in Das Reich.

4. On 5 November 1941, Jeckeln's men, about 50 in total, arrived in Riga. Jeckeln himself arrived some time after.58 Himmler evidently approved of the "liquidation" of the Riga ghetto. It is clear that on 4 December 1941, very shortly after the first day of mass killings of the Baltic Jews in Riga on 30 November 1941, Jeckeln met with Himmler to discuss these events.59 A mere four days after this meeting, on 8 December 1941, Jeckeln supervised the killing of most of the remaining Jews in Riga. Concluding, Himmler had most probably ordered these massacres before the publication of Goebbels article in Das Reich. 60

59. Public Record Office (PRO), HW 16/32, German Police Decodes, No. 2 traffic:
1.12.1941. A Himmler phone call to Heydrich on 30 November 1941,
discussed in detail later in this report, aimed at preventing the
semi-public execution of a train-load of Berlin Jews in Riga on 30
November 1941, also suggests that Himmler was aware of the fact that
the killing of the native Jews in Riga was planned at this
time.